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You can’t ask me that: why how old you are can be a highly sensitive topic.

If you’re ever stuck for an ice-breaker in a room full of six-year-olds, there’s one question guaranteed to get them all talking: “How old are you?” Especially if you follow it up with a wildly inaccurate guess.

“Let me see. You’re 15, right?” you suggest to the child celebrating the beginning of a seventh trip around the sun.

“Noooo!” they’ll cry. They may even slap their own forehead at your stupidity. “I’m six!”

They will then fill you in on the ages of the children around them, in relation to their own age and with great precision.

“He’s six months younger than me. She’s only two. She’s seven and three days…”

Et cetera. If you’re lucky, they’ll then start going through the ages of the attending adults before making their own wildly inaccurate guess about your vintage.